CHAPTER 9

The Selenite's Face

I found myself sitting in a noisy darkness. For a long time I could not understand where I was, nor how I had come to be there. I could not make out anything of the sounds about me, and there was a thin smell in the air like the smell of a stable.

"Cavor," I said, "can't we have some light?"

There came no answer.

"Cavor!" I insisted.

I was answered by a groan. "My head!" I heard him say; "my head!"

I attempted to press my hands to my brow, which ached, and discovered they were tied together. This startled me very much. I brought them up to my mouth and felt the cold smoothness of metal. They were chained together. I tried to separate my legs, and found out they were similarly fastened, and also that I was fastened to the ground by a much thicker chain about my waist.

I was frightened. For a time I pulled silently at my bonds. "Cavor!" I cried out sharply. "Why am I tied? Why have you tied me hand and foot?"

"I haven't tied you," he answered. "It's the Selenites."

The Selenites! My mind hung on that for a space. Then my memories came back to me: the snowy crater, the melting of the air, the growth of the plants, our strange leaping and crawling. All the distress of our search for the sphere returned to me ... Finally the opening of the great lid that covered the pit!

Then as I tried to trace our later movements down to our present sad condition, the pain in my head became unbearable.

"Cavor, where are we?"

"How should I know?"

"Are we dead?"

"What nonsense!"

"They've got us, then!"

"He made no answer.

"What do you mean to do?"

"How should I know what to do?"

We became silent again, listening to dull noises like the sounds of a distant street or factory that filled our ears. I could make nothing of it, but presently I became aware of a different, sharper sound. Then there appeared before me a thin bright line.

"Look!" whispered Cavor very softly.

"What is it?"

"I don't know."

We stared.

The thin bright line became a band. Then it took the form of a bluish light falling upon a white-washed wall. I twisted my head round as well as my bonds would permit. "Cavor," I said, "it's behind!"

Suddenly the crack that had been admitting the light broadened out, and revealed itself as the space of an opening door. Beyond was a long narrow view of a bluish colour, and in the doorway an odd figure stood outlined against the glare.

He had the slender body and short legs of a Selenite, but he was without the helmet and body covering they wear upon the exterior.

He came forward three steps and paused for a time. His movements seemed absolutely noiseless. Then he came forward again. He walked like a bird, his feet fell one in front of the other.

He stood facing us both in the full light. He was horrible to look at. His face was like a horrible mask. There was no nose, and the thing had dull bulging eyes at the sides. There were no ears ... There was a mouth, curved down, like a human mouth in a face staring fiercely ... The neck was jointed in three places, almost like the short joints in the leg of a crab.

There the thing was, looking at us!

At the time my mind was taken up by the mad impossibility of the creature. I suppose he also was amazed, and with more reason, perhaps, for amazement than we. Only he did not show it!

Imagine us! We were bound hand and foot, weary and dirty; our beards two inches long, our faces scratched and bloody. Cavor you must imagine in his cycling trousers (torn in several places by the bushes) and his old cricket cap, his hair wildly disordered, If possible I was in a worse condition than he, on account of the yellow fungus into which I had jumped. Our shoes had been taken off and lay at our feet, and we were sitting with our backs to this queer bluish light, peering at the Selenite.

Cavor broke the silence; started to speak, went hoarse, and cleared his throat. Outside began a terrific bellowing, as if a mooncalf was in trouble. It ended in a shriek, and everything was still again.

Presently the Selenite turned about, stood for a moment at the door, and then closed it on us; and once more we were in that mysterious darkness into which we had awakened.